Re: Delimiters for pragmas

Tom Hillman writes:

> Tempted to suggest using 🐀 and 🍑...

Finally, a suggestion we can all agree on!

> ... [some remarks I think are sound elided here ...]

> The only argument I will make is that we will not be remembered kindly
> if we insist on using brackets that users can not easily type.

Point taken.

> I accept the point that not all of the world work using US or UK
> keyboards, but I would point out that those users who are technically
> inclined enough to be likely to write an iXML grammar who are not
> using said keyboards are at least familiar with the workarounds that
> they need to produce the symbols and brackets that are already in
> widespread usage.  I have no desire to be the subject of curses from
> users constantly having to remember code points or bring up character
> maps simply in order to specify a commonly used pragma every other
> line in a grammar.

But while I don't want to press this observation too hard, I suspect
that every operating system in wide use (probably including iOS and
Android) has tools for specifying simple input shortcuts for commonly
used characters.  Many users will never have used those tools, but they
exist and if we push a few users to become a little more comfortable
using parts of Unicode their vendors have not put on their keyboards,
that's good.  (Someone suggested on xml-dev the other day that one
lasting contribution of XML was to force a large number of programmers
to get over their fear of Unicode.  Possibly true.)

No one should have to remember code points, really.

> I am happy to have alternative syntaxes, or a single syntax.  I can
> live with white brackets, and I am fine with {[]} or {||} as
> suggestions.  I agree that the `?` standard is cute, but ultimately
> hard to grok for humans.

You speak my mind.

-- 
C. M. Sperberg-McQueen
Black Mesa Technologies LLC
http://blackmesatech.com

Received on Tuesday, 1 February 2022 00:48:26 UTC